Understanding The Self

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 The Self from the Various Perspective

“ The good life is the

process, not a state being.
It is a direction, not a
destination.”- Carl Rogers
PHILOSOPHERS’ PERSPECTIVE OF THE SELF

• SOCRATES
• PLATO
• ST. AUGUSTINE
• RENE DESCARTES
• JOHN LOCKE
• DAVID HUME
• SIGMUND FREUD
• IMMANUEL KANT
• GILBERT RYLE
 SOCRATES(470-399 B.C)
• He explored his philosophy of immortality in the days
following his trial and before his sentence to death
was executed.
• According to him, an unexamined life is not worth
living. This statement is reflected in his idea of the
self.
• He believed in Dualism that aside from the physical
body(material substance) each person has an
immortal(eternal/undying) soul(immaterial
substance)
• The body belongs to physical realm and the soul
to the ideal realm. When you die, your body dies
but not your soul. There is a life after death of
your physical body. There is a world after death.
• According to him, in order to have a good life,
you must live a good life, a life with the purpose,
and that purpose is for you to do well. Then there
you will be happy after your body dies.
 PLATO
• He was greatly affected by Socrates’ death.
Socrates was Plato’s teacher.
• He believed that the self is immortal and it
consists of 3 parts: the Reason, Physical
appetite and Spirit or Passion.
REASON- the divine essence that enables you to
think deeply, makes wise choices and achieve
an understanding of eternal truths.
PHYSICAL APPETITE- your basic biological needs
such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire

SPIRIT or PASSION- your basic emotions such as

love, anger, ambition, aggressiveness and
empathy.
The 3 components may work together or in
conflict. If human beings do not live in
accordance with their nature/function, the
result will be an injustice.
 ST. AUGUSTINE
• He was a great explorer in his youth and
young adulthood; he spent great times with his
friends and up to the extent of fathering an
illegitimate child.
• He explorations led to his conversation to
Christianity where in he spent the remainder
of his day serving the bishop of Hippo and
writing books and letters including his idea of
the self.
• At first, he thought the body as the “slave” of the
soul but ultimately, regarded the body as the
“spouse” of the soul both attached to one another.
He believed that the body is united with the soul,
so that man may be entire and complete. His first
principle was ,”I doubt, therefore I am.”
• The self seeks to be united with God through faith
and reason and he described that humanity is
created in the image and likeness of God,
That God is supreme and all-knowing and
everything created by God who is all good is
good.
 JOHN LOCKED
According to Locked, the human mind at birth is
tabula rasa “blank slate” the self or personal
identity is constructed primarily from sense
experiences which shape and mold the self
throughout a person’s life.
Personal identity is made possible by self
consciousness. In order to discover the nature
of personal identity, you need to find out what
it means to be a person.
A person is thinking, intelligent being who has abilities to
reason and to reflect.
A person is also someone who considers itself to be the
same thing at different times and different places.
Consciousness means being aware that you are thinking;
this what makes your belief that you are the same
identity at different times in different places.
The essence of the self is its conscious awareness of itself
as thinking, reasoning and reflecting identity.
 RENE DESCARTES
• He was a scientist in his professional life and during
his time, scientists believed that after death the
physical body dies, hence the self also dies.
• The self is a thinking thing, distinct from the body .
• The thinking self or soul is nonmaterial, immortal,
conscious while the physical body is material,
mortal, non thinking entity fully governed by
physical laws of nature.
 DAVID HUME
• He left the University of Edinburg at the age of
15, to study privately. Although he was
encourage to take up law, his interest was
philosophy. it is during his private study that
he began raising questions about religion.
• For him there is no “self” only a bundle of
perceptions passing through the theater of
your minds.
• According to him, humans are so desperately
wanting to believe that they have unified and
continuous self or soul that they use their
imagination to construct a fictional(unreal or
imaginary) self.
The mind is theatre, container for fleeting the
sensations and disconnected ideas and reasoning
ability is merely a slave to the passions. Hence
personal identity is just a result of imagination.
 IMMANUEL KANT
• Although Kant recognizes the legitimacy in
Hume’s account, he opposes the idea of Hume
that everything starts with perception and
sensation of impressions, that’s why he
brought the idea of the self as response
against the idea of Hume.
• For Kant, there is unavoidably a mind that
systematizes the impressions that men get
from external world.
• Therefore, Kant believed that the self is a
product of reason because the self regulates
experience by making unified experience
possible.
• We construct the self. The self exists
independently of experience and the self goes
beyond experience.
SIGMUND FREUD